1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a discharge and cutting apparatus for footwear sewing machines and in particular to an apparatus for removing footwear components interconnected by a tape from a tandem sewing machine and cutting the tape.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the production of uppers for basketball or tennis shoes or boots, canvas quarters are first joined together by a single line of stitching parallel to the back or heel edges of the quarters. The quarters are then spread apart, each fabric edge outside the seam is folded flat against its respective quarter, a strip of tape is applied to the seam to cover the folded edges, and the tape is secured to the quarters by two parallel lines of stitching, one on each side of the first seam.
The stitching and tape applying operations are performed in a so-called tandem sewing machine, which includes a pair of sewing machines. A first sewing machine performs the first stitching operation, following which the shoe components are fed along a base plate where guides separate the components and fold the edges outside the seam flat against their respective quarters. Tape from a large roll is fed from beneath the base plate against the folded quarter edges, and the components and tape are fed into a two needle sewing machine for the last two stitching operations, which are performed simultaneously. The components are then discharged from the tandem sewing machine for separation, i.e., cutting of the tape at the leading and trailing edges of each component and further processing. Such further processing includes completion of the upper, lasting and sole moulding.
In the recent past, the components, interconnected sausage-fashion by the tape were separated manually using scissors. More recently, a variety of cutting devices have been produced for accurately cutting the tape at the leading and trailing edges of the footwear components (see, for example, applicant's Canadian Pat. No. 932,650, issued Aug. 28, 1973).
Even with such cutting devices, there still exists a need for controlled discharge of the footwear components and tape from the tandem sewing machine, while accurately severing the tape at the leading/trailing edges of the components. The object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for accepting the sewed footwear components and tape from the second sewing machine and positively feeding the components and tape through cutting operations for discharge into separate containers, where the components can be fed to further processing operations and the tape ends removed by cutting can be discarded.